Simply watching Dr. Simmons Lessell figure out what illness had befallen a patient was part of the training for the aspiring neuro-ophthalmologists who followed him on his rounds at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. And for those already experienced in the field, seeing him take a patient’s case history was a welcome refresher course.
“He was one of the most gifted diagnosticians of all time – really remarkable in that sense,” said Dr. Joan Miller, who is chief of ophthalmology at Mass. Eye and Ear and chairs the ophthalmology department at Harvard Medical School. “Other clinicians loved to hear him work his way through a diagnosis.”
She added that although Dr. Lessell was one of the most respected physicians in his specialty – “one of the ones who helped define the field of neuro-ophthalmology” – another valuable lesson he taught was when it was time to concede that he was stumped. “He was not afraid to say, ‘Geez, it doesn’t fit with anything. I don’t know what this is,’ ” she recalled.
Dr. Lessell, who was the Paul Austin Chandler distinguished professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and had been the first director of neuro-ophthalmology at Mass. Eye and Ear, died May 9 in Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington of complications from an infection after surgery. He was 82 and had moved to Lincoln about a year ago after living in Lexington for many years.
Asked in a 2007 interview what made his teaching special, Dr. Lessell answered: “I’m honest.”
“I acknowledge my shortcomings,” he told the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology. “I’ve also tried to be generous. If you have more pieces of the puzzle than the person you are teaching, the next criterion is generosity. What you are trying to do is to give to someone else everything that you have acquired and the means of gaining more. You hope that each one will do even better than you do. The teacher who holds back or is abusive or gruff – I do not see a place for that.”
Dr. Lessell taught kindness rather than gruffness. “Simmons always talked about the three ‘As’: availability, ability, and affability. You have to be able to be empathic and communicate,” Miller said.
She was trained by Dr. Lessell, who she said was “a good teacher in so many ways.”
As a medical student, Dr. Lessell had studied with the early founders of his field and was among “a very small number of, if you will, second-generation trainees,” said Dr. Joseph Rizzo, who was the first neuro-ophthalmology fellow to train with Dr. Lessell. “Simmons was one of just a couple of people whom I would credit with popularizing the field that became known as neuro-ophthalmology. He helped create excitement in others who went into the field.”
Neuro-ophthalmology treats vision problems that originate in the nervous system.
Dr. Lessell helped develop the field in part by becoming “an extraordinary educator,” said Rizzo, who is the David G. Cogan professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and Mass. Eye and Ear. “He really had a gift for being able to explain complicated material in a way that was not only easy to understand but enjoyable to listen to.”
The life lessons Dr. Lessell taught didn’t stop inside the hospital. Many trainees ended up following their mentor, fishing rod in hand, out to the parking lot for a lesson in casting. Dr. Lessell was a devoted fly-fisherman, a pastime that for him combined pleasure and precision.
“He was hard-working and demanding of those who worked with him but also was enjoyable because he had a great wit. He had an enormous collection of jokes in his head that could be called up at a moment’s notice,” Rizzo said. “The other part about him that was special was that it mattered a lot to him to get to know people very well. He wanted to know all sorts of details about your life.”
Dr. Lessell’s own life began in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he was the younger of two siblings and grew up in a walk-up apartment behind the neighborhood dental office of his father, Dr. Bernard Lessell. His mother, the former Augusta Coleman, was a homemaker and an immigrant from a town near the border of Ukraine and Romania.
“Where I grew up, you either had to be strong, which I wasn’t, or run fast, which I couldn’t, or else laugh your way out of it, which was my defense,” he told the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology. His Brooklyn neighborhood, he quipped, “was rough. I think there was a protection racket in kindergarten.”
After attending Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Dr. Lessell went to Amherst College, from which he graduated in 1954.
While there he met Irma Miller on a blind date and they married in 1955. Once their four sons were no longer young, she returned to medical school and specialized in neuro-ophthalmology and pediatric neurology. She died in 2014, and one of their sons, Jason, died in 1977.
Dr. Lessell graduated from the medical school now known as Weill Cornell Medicine and then trained at the University of Vermont and the National Institutes of Health. He also conducted research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in Guam. He moved to Boston for an ophthalmology residency and was the first neuro-ophthalmologist recruited by Boston Medical Center. He remained there from 1963 until 1984, when Mass. Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School recruited him to return as the first director of neuro-ophthalmology.
“He had a passion for what he did and he was puzzled by people who didn’t,” said his son Newell of Arlington.
For Dr. Lessell, who read widely and was very knowledgeable about opera, fly-fishing was a beloved pursuit and his wife “was his primary fishing buddy,” their son added.
“His life really did center around being a physician and his marriage to my mom,” Newell said. “Those were far and away the central pillars of his life.”
Family members held a private service for Dr. Lessell, who in addition to his son Newell leaves two other sons, Miller of Israel and Ephraim of Medford; his sister, Florence Jaffe of Tucson; and four grandchildren.
Dr. Lessell “definitely was an optimist,” Newell said. “He was able to see the humor in almost anything and was able to find something interesting in almost anything.”
As with his lectures and one-on-one teaching, Dr. Lessell’s “writing had a sparkle to it, and you could appreciate his playfulness and the enjoyment he took,” Rizzo said.
Perfecting what the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology interviewer called Dr. Lessell’s “gems of medical writing” was hard work, however. Dr. Lessell noted in 2007 that one of his mentors once advised him that “there is no great writing, just great rewriting.”
In medical articles, on rounds, and giving lectures Dr. Lessell “was a wonderful mentor,” Miller said.
“Now that he’s gone, I think I could have learned more from him over two more decades,” she added. “No matter how much you knew about him, you felt like you were only touching the surface.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.